creativemyles

For Halloween, GPS Insight wanted to to something a little bit different.

We had a meeting to discuss what needs our customers were having and how we could provide more information in a fun and thematic way.

I pitched the idea of creating two gremlin-like characters called “Wear” and “Tear” that would haunt fleets that weren’t keeping up with regular maintenance of their vehicles. The idea was that for Halloween, the duo would hijack our homepage and promote an eBook on preventative maintenance.

The team liked the idea so we decided to go forward with it. (Cue scary organ sounds). When my designers asked what Wear and Tear should look like I say something along the lines of, “give me ‘Transfomers meets Tom and Jerry’ characters who were sent to hell.”

The results did not disappoint.

I was able to work with the copywriting team on what their backstory should look and sound like. This was the biggest part. The hooks needed to be strong enough to bring people to the form fills so they can download our eBook.

We wanted to fit the theme of these goofy Disney rejects, but we wanted to be sure anyone reading about them could also learn something about the dangers of ignoring regular vehicle care. This is where the tight rope act was introduced to our circus.

This took a great deal of understanding what problems our customers encounter while out in the field as well as a means to communicate it back to them clearly. We were constantly asking ourselves, “does this fit the balance we’re trying to achieve?”

At one point I even found myself proofreading the copy out loud to see if we were capturing the “voice” of the characters. It took a handful of tries. Believe it or not, we were sounding too technical on all the proofs of copy. It took a lot of direction and encouragement for the team to get to the point where they could start thinking and writing outside of the box we were so comfortable in.

The writing team did an incredible job with organizing the content and making sure we were still hitting the theme any chance we could get.

Now of course, nobody was going to know this was even a thing if we didn’t promote it. So we got to my favorite part of this campaign.

I reached out to our video editing team and asked them to make a teaser for the launch of the takeover. When I pitched my original idea, I wanted this preview video to be the first time our audience knows something is wrong. There’s a bug in the system and we’re going to hook them in long enough to want to tune in to the next update.

The vision was to have the video be a warning. In the warning was a clue about what the theme would be for this campaign. We left enough of a bread trail to hook our audience in, without spoiling everything immediately.

We collaborated on a proof of concept and after a few storyboarding sessions, they came up with this gem.

I love how Mark was able to bring in the hook with his intro before the “glitch” kicks in. If you pay attention, he’s not just rambling, he’s totally on theme with the entire video. That little ninja move was so slick to me. And of course the jump scare was a hit as well.

This launched the first week of the month on our social media pages and at the start of our email campaign. Of course this was confusing to some, but it got the attention we wanted.

Finally, it was Halloween (cue scary organ sounds), and we had “Wear and Tear” take over the home page with their dastardly powers.

The eBook was one of the most downloaded eBooks of the quarter and we saw a great uptick in leads which was super important after a relatively slower summer.

We learned a lot about our capabilities through this campaign and it was great for us to test our mettle for even more fun and exciting campaigns to come!